Minnesota Public Radio has once again covered some of the many benefits coming from the stimulus-funded Southwest Minnesota Broadband Services that grew out of WindomNet, a small muni network. It is now offering some of the fastest connections in the region to people who previously only had dial-up or slow DSL.

Schensted and his wife are the first in their southwest Minnesota community to connect to a new high-speed Internet service. He said the new service is everything it was advertised to be.

"We're getting anywhere from 50 megabits downloading and about 20 to 30 uploading," Schensted said. "It's just really incredibly fast."

Stimulus dollars spent on expanding publicly owned networks gets the most bang for the taxpayer's buck and should have been a much larger focus for the broadband stimulus.

The people and businesses served by this network have faster connections at lower prices than we can get in the metro area of Minneapolis/St Paul.

Schensted's house is connected to the nearly $13 million Southwest Minnesota Broadband Service project that will serve eight communities: Bingham Lake, Brewster, Heron Lake, Jackson, Lakefield, Okabena, Round Lake and Wilder.

Internet equipment
Schensted said he has never had that kind of Internet speed, even when he lived in the Twin Cities.

"This is perhaps overkill for even my home," he said. "I'm not complaining about it, but it's a wonderful overkill. My wife and I can both be using a computer, we can be streaming something on the television, all at the same time which is something we wouldn't have dreamed of before."

Smart public investments can connect everyone in this state, at a fraction of the price that it would cost to subsidize the big private companies to do it. They are too inefficient and require too large a margin of profit, in addition to a host of other problems.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission is hosting an informational meeting on Thursday, January 12, at 1:00. For those who cannot make it in person, it will be webcast here.

The PDF announcement is here.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission will convene an informational meeting in the format of panel discussion to examine the implications of the FCC Order with respect to (i) universal service funding, (ii) intercarrier compensation and (iii) the substantive and procedural tasks that the Commission can be expected to face in the coming months.

The meeting will commence with opening remarks by Commission Chair Ellen Anderson and
Commissioner Michael Rothman of the Minnesota Department Commerce. The panel
discussion will be moderated by Commissioner Betsy Wergin. The panelists are:

• Jeff Lindsey; CenturyLink
• Brent Christensen; Minnesota Telecom Alliance
• Dan Lipschultz; Moss Barnett PA, competitive carrier perspective
• Tom Cohen; Kelley, Drye Warren LLP for the American Cable Association
• Dave Conn; T-Mobile
• Dennis Ahlers; Minnesota Department of Commerce.

The Commission will welcome questions from attendees as time permits.

I would have specifically liked to hear how the rural telephone coops would be affected by the inter-carrier compensation changes as those charges have helped many rural communities gain access to broadband. Apparently, the MTA rep will represent their viewpoint.

One of our kindred spirits across the pond reached out to me after I wrote about Vermont's self-funded community network. The B4RN initiative, Broadband for the Rural North, has launched using a coop model that will offer 1Gbps connections to everyone in the covered territories.

The business plan is available here.

Broadband for the Rural North Ltd has been registered as a Community Benefit Society within the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 (IPS), and is controlled by the Financial Services Authority. Shares will be issued to provide funding for the project and members of the community will be encouraged to subscribe to the share issue. The share issue will comply with the Enterprise Initiative Scheme established by HMRC to encourage individual share holdings in new and developing companies. Under certain circumstances investors could reclaim 30% of the value of shares produced.

As a community company, the project will be funded and to a greater extent built by the community for the community. Our ambition is to keep expenditure, where possible, within the community. In addition to purchasing shares, the community will have the opportunity to “purchase” shares in exchange for labour and materials during the project build.

The initial share offer will be £2,000,000 of shares with a face value of £1, to be launched in late 2011 and open for 1 year. The project is expected to commence on site in early 2012 and completed by the year end. The initial network will be progressively added to over subsequent years until approximately 15000 properties in adjoining rural parishes are completely connected to the FTTH network.

To keep costs low in their rural areas, B4RN will be taking a non-traditional approach:

B4RN will adopt a different approach; we will lay the duct not on the highway but across the farmland on the other side of the wall. Digging a narrow trench and installing a duct within it is dramatically less expensive across private farmland than along the highway. The...

Vermont's East Central Fiber-Optic Network (ECFiber) has finished its second round of financing. We noted that the network had exceeded its financing goals at the beginning of this year by raising over $1 million and subsequently began connecting rural homes with its next-generation network. (See all of our ECFiber coverage here.)

The network is now connecting 120 households, a bit below its goal of 164 for the end of the calendar year... but it also had to deal with an unexpected hurricane (Irene) that seriously disrupted the entire state and kept fiber-splicers running ragged.

ECFiber has just completed its second round of financing. While the first round was dominated by a few major investors, the second round had a broader base -- a sign that many in the community have embraced the approach. From the ECFiber press release:

ECFiber is using an innovative funding method to extend its network, supported by local citizens who lend funds that enable build-out to local neighborhoods within and across member towns. Citizens who invest as little as $2500 allow ECFiber to reach all households along designated routes. ECFiber determines where it will build by choosing routes that reach the greatest number of unserved businesses and households, which are then connected to ECFiber’s state-of-the-art fiber-optic service.

These people are literally investing in themselves. ECFiber is an InterLocal Contract with a Governing Board composed of a representiative from each member town (of which there are 23). Investors are purchasing tax exempt 15 year promissory notes that effectively earn 6% interest (due to the one year holiday from interest and principal).

They have raised $340,000 in this round of financing, which will allow the network to pass 60-65% of Barnard's 950 residents. Spokesman Bob Merrill said the network again surpassed its expectations of investor interest and noted that several neighborhoods came on board after one or two interested residents rallied neighbors to invest so they could finally have high-speed connections to the Internet.

The network remains committed to connecting every person in the 23-town area but absent outside...